Application of photovoltaic cells with an intelligent control system for railway transport

Application area of solar panels is expanding every year. Modern solar panels are widely used in various industries, such as aerospace, aviation, electricity supply buildings, outdoor lighting, etc. This article focuses on the use of solar energy in various railway fields. The results of the study to achieve maximum efficiency of the photovoltaic module using the algorithm of maximum power point tracking (MPPT) are shown. Many maximum power point tracking techniques for photovoltaic systems have been developed to maximize the produced energy and a lot of these are well established in the literature. However, when irradiance and temperature are changing rapidly, not all methods can track MPP rapidly enough. This paper presents a MPPT method, based on artificial neural network (ANN). A fast and accurate system realizing that method is offered. Efficiency of an ANN with different input parameters is estimated. Modeling is carried out with the software package Matlab, considering different solar irradiance variations and temperature.